Devin Nunes Will Quit the House to Take Over Trump’s Media Company
WASHINGTON — Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican who emerged as one of former President Donald J. Trump’s most loyal and pugnacious allies, announced on Monday that he would resign from Congress after 19 years to become the chief executive officer of Mr. Trump’s new media and technology company.
Mr. Nunes faced almost impossible odds in being re-elected to the Central Valley district that his family has farmed for three generations. A new map emerging from an independent citizens’ redistricting commission was almost certain to flip it from a district Mr. Trump won handily to one President Biden would have won.
But political analysts and politicians in the district had predicted that Mr. Nunes — who was the chairman, then the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee during the Trump administration — would jump to a newly created, Republican-friendly district. That would have allowed him to continue his congressional career and assume the helm of the powerful Ways and Means Committee if Republicans took control of the House, as they are favored to do.
Mr. Nunes’s decision to take over Mr. Trump’s fledgling media enterprise instead of the influential House panel that writes tax and health care policy signals where he thinks power lies in the Republican Party and the conservative movement.
